Texas Tech University, a public university in Lubbock, announced in April 2026 that its five schools would phase out all academic credentials centered on sexual orientation or gender identity. The new policy, detailed in a six-page memo on April 9, also requires instructors to use “alternate materials” when courses address these topics.

Texas Tech, led by former Texas Republican state legislator Brandon Creighton, is not the first university to try to restrict instruction on gender, sexual orientation and other topics in recent years.

In 2023, for example, Florida passed legislation that banned students at public universities from majoring in critical race theory, gender studies, queer theory and intersectionality.

Texas Tech, however, goes further with this new memo. It also bars graduate students from writing “degree-culminating” theses or dissertations on sexual orientation or gender identity, something no other major public university system appears to have done.

As a scholar who studies the intersection of law, science and public policy, I doubt the policy would survive a possible constitutional challenge in court, given First Amendment freedom of speech protections. Even if courts ultimately strike the policy down, though, it may still leave a lasting mark, by signaling that some universities are willing to prioritize politics over independent academic inquiry.

Texas Tech’s policy shift

Texas Tech’s policy, which will begin taking effect in June 2026, requires faculty to teach in compliance with a 2025 Texas law that declares there are “only two human sexes.”

The law echoes the language of an executive order the Trump administration issued in January 2025 that said “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.”

Despite that air of certainty, there is substantial scientific literature that shows people’s biological variation does not fit a strict binary model.

Texas Tech........

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